NEW YORK, NY — August 1, 2017. L2 Inc, digital benchmarking firm based in New York, released its report titled “Video: Live”, which found that over 4 percent of Facebook videos posted in June 2017 by analyzed brands were live, up from 1 percent in August 2016.
Live video is a fast-growing feature on many social media platforms. The report found that seventy-eight percent of Facebook Live video views were paid in June 2017, up from 57 percent in November 2016.
A feature notoriously copied from Snapchat – Instagram Stories, measured in terms of both brand accounts and total posts by brands, surpassed adoption of Snapchat Stories in Q2 2017, the report found.
According to the report, few technologies have altered the social video landscape in the last five years as much as live and ephemeral video. Digital live video mimics a TV broadcast, enabling real-time connections with audiences, while ephemeral video like Snapchat and Instagram Stories allows brands to communicate one-on-one with consumers.
Snapchat broke the ice by gaining wide adoption of ephemeral video in 2013, building a user base of 122 million as of Q1 2016.3 Seeking a slice of this growing pie, Facebook Inc. copied Snapchat’s model. Instagram launched Stories in August 2016, followed by Facebook Stories in March 2017, report says.
Digital live video, meanwhile, introduced a new way for brands to reach consumers in real-time at scale. Twitter acquired Periscope in 2015 and began livestreaming major televised events, such as Thursday Night Football, in the fall of 2016. In April 2016, Facebook Inc. unveiled Facebook Live, which is integrated directly into the Facebook app and allows any user—consumer, publisher, or brand—to broadcast videos on the fly to their audiences.
YouTube followed suit in February 2017, launching YouTube Live—an offering similar to Facebook Live. Facebook Live has been quickly commercialized, and was used by 74 percent of brands studied in the L2 Intelligence Report: Video 2017. Despite this heavy buy-in, brands largely have yet to refine their live video strategies. This report highlights early best practices that have emerged.
